Cold, hard, metal.
Omair Tariq tries to make sense of the object against his temple, where—seconds earlier—he felt nothing but a cool breeze through the open window of his rented black Honda Civic. He’s stopped at a red light in Karachi, Pakistan. His buddy, Waqas, is next to him. The local pop song “Duur” by Strings blares on the radio—its lyrics all about someone who comes from afar to steal your heart, which Tariq can relate to. At age 16, he, too, is in a long-distance relationship with a girl he has traveled across the ocean to visit. And yet, now…what is this thing touching his head? He turns and sees a bearded man standing at his window.
It’s a gun.
Until this moment in December 2001, Tariq had been unstoppable. The youngest of three children, he was born in Karachi and a month later moved to Dubai, where he grew up feeling acutely aware of his outsider status. Not only did his family struggle financially amidst the glitzy wealth of the Emirates, but he was a Pakistani citizen. After flunking third grade, he developed a kind of I’ll show them attitude—intent on surging past the classmates who laughed at him. And he did: He graduated high school two years early, at age 15, and aspired to be a NASA astrophysicist. The following year, his family moved to Houston, where Tariq began studying finance at the University of Houston while delivering pizzas and cleaning bathrooms for $6 an hour to pay for school. He had also kept up with his girlfriend, a student named Sundas Khan, whom he’d met in Karachi after high school when she was 14. Right away, he knew he’d marry her. They were already engaged…
But now, who knows? This stranger is holding a pistol to his head. The bearded man shoves his way into the driver’s seat, gesturing roughly for Tariq to move over onto his friend’s lap. A second bearded guy climbs into the back seat. They’re talking in Pashto, probably from Afghanistan. Although Tariq speaks four languages, this isn’t one of them.
As the driver speeds off, Tariq bounces around on Waqas’ lap without a seatbelt until he’s ordered to climb in the back with Kidnapper No. 2,
